Technology invented by scientists from The Johns Hopkins
University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev can make
three-dimensional imaging quicker, easier, less expensive
and more accurate, the researchers said.

This new technology, dubbed FINCH, for Fresnel incoherent
correlation holography, could have implications in medical
applications such as endoscopy, ophthalmology, CT scanning,
X-ray imaging and ultrasounds, co-inventor Gary Brooker
said. It may also be applicable to homeland security
screening, 3-D photography and 3-D video, he said.

Gary Brooker

A report presenting the first demonstration of this
technology — with a 3-D microscope called a FINCHSCOPE
— will appear in the March issue of Nature
Photonics and will be available on the Nature Photonics
Web site on Feb. 17.
"Normally, 3-D imaging requires taking multiple images on
multiple planes and then reconstructing the images," said
Brooker, director of the
Johns Hopkins University Microscopy
Center on the university's
Montgomery County
Campus.

"This is a slow process that is restricted to microscope
objectives that have less than optimal resolving power,"
said Brooker, a research professor of chemistry in Krieger School of Arts
and Sciences who also has an appointment in the
Whiting School of
Engineering Advanced Technology Laboratory. "For this
reason, holography currently is not widely applied to the
field of 3-D fluorescence microscopic imaging."

The FINCH technology and the FINCHSCOPE uses microscope
objectives with the highest resolving power, a spatial light
modulator, a charge-coupled device camera and some simple
filters to enable the acquisition of 3-D microscopic images
without the need for scanning multiple planes.

Joseph Rosen

The Nature Photonics article reports on a use of the
FINCHSCOPE to take a 3-D still image, but moving 3-D images
are coming, said Brooker and co-inventor Joseph Rosen,
professor of electrical and computer engineering at
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

"With traditional 3-D imaging, you cannot capture a moving
object," Brooker said. "With the FINCHSCOPE, you can
photograph multiple planes at once, enabling you to capture
a 3-D image of a moving object. Researchers now will be able
to track biological events happening quickly in cells."

The research was funded by CellOptic Inc. and a National
Science Foundation grant with the technology being
demonstrated using equipment at the Johns Hopkins Montgomery
County Campus Microscopy Center.

Brooker and Rosen are founders of CellOptic Inc., which owns
the FINCH technology. The terms of Brooker's involvement
with CellOptic are being managed in accordance with Johns
Hopkins' conflict of interest policy.

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